My Best Ideas are All
Wet
By Sue Marquette Poremba
Without fail, when I am in the shower or the swimming pool, a million article or
story ideas flow through my mind. Unfortunately, my notebook isn’t waterproof.
Why the water? Other people sing in the shower. I tend to sing everywhere else,
so maybe it is because the shower is the one place where my mouth is shut long
enough to get some quality thinking done.
However, I think the best ideas come when you are least able to write them down.
When recording my ideas immediately is virtually impossible, my brain goes into
overload, but I’ll be lucky if I can remember anything by the time I get to dry
land.
It may help too that water is my cheap version of a full-body massage. Water
relaxes me. Stress floats away when I sit on the beach, watching the waves wash
up on the shore. Rain falling on the roof soothes me to sleep. When I’m in the
water, I find my mind uncluttered by thoughts of housework, carpools, and
in-laws, allowing my brain to wrap itself around ideas for my writing.
Not only am I completely calm in the water, I’m also completely undisturbed. No
one is there to talk to me. Moments completely alone with no other distractions
rarely happen outside the water.
In the shower at the gym, my memory drifted to the toddler antics of my
now-teenaged daughter, which I turned into a published essay. During a lingering
bubble bath, I wondered if the story of an auction would make a nice story (a
regional market thought so).
Swimming, while not necessarily the source of the best ideas, gives me the best
opportunity to think. There, as my mind works in tandem with my strokes,
thoughts flow as complete sentences and paragraphs, with beginnings and endings,
an entire article or query letter written, edited, and rewritten during a
thirty-minute swim. (I’m convinced that I could complete my novel if I could
swim enough laps in one session.)
The problem is keeping the article in my head until I can write it down. I do
carry writing goodies with me to the gym, but someone stole my shower stall once
when I tried taking a break to jot down some thoughts. At home, there is
usually an entourage at the bathroom door, ready to pounce the moment I walk out
the door. Swimming? I simply pray that at least a few snippets of the “perfectly
written article” will stay with me until I get to my computer. Sometimes that
happens-- an article about marriage and exercise virtually wrote itself on paper
after it was developed in the pool. More often, though, the swimming stories
are like dreams-- foggy at best, completely forgotten at worst, evaporated by
the time I get to the hot tub.
My best ideas are all wet. All I need to do is dry them off.
Sue Marquette
Poremba is a freelance writer based in central Pennsylvania. Her writing
credits include The Christian Science Monitor, Road King, iParenting.com, Notre
Dame Magazine, among others.
